Month: September 2016

Fashion is fickle – no doubt about that! It’s only two days ago that I made a point about how a fashion collection must have a strong and novel silhouette in order to be exciting (read more about that here) that I find myself falling in love with collections with a minimal silhouette that is very straightforward. So how can that be? Because in fashion there really aren’t any rules, and in the minute you give a guideline of how to make something work, it’s proven that it can be done otherwise. It’s anything but German grammar, where a rule is a rule – no exception. In fashion sometimes it just works, because… yeah, well, it just works. This can make fashion hard to teach, and it can make it hard to comprehend for outsiders. That’s probably also one of the reasons, why a fashion designer’s finest asset is his or her ability to see the world in a unique way and trust ones own intuition. A couple of days ago, I got really excited …

A lot of elements are important to balance, when making a fashion collection such as fabrics, silhouette, colours, details, styling and so on, and it all starts with an excellent research. A research that feels fresh and is intuitive, while also being rooted in what’s going on in the fashion world around us (read more about the two parts of fashion design here). But, more often than not, students – and sometimes also designers – struggle to understand the importance of Key Shapes and Silhouette. Without a strong and convincing Fashion Collection Silhouette, an otherwise rich and well-crafted collection tends to fall apart. Of course, the Silhouette should reflect the customer, who is more or less fashion-forward. Every fashion brand should know, who their customer is, and then each season they can add more or less trendy shapes to their basic garments, which their brand is known for. So, what makes a ‘strong’ Fashion Collection Silhouette depends on the brand essentially, as most other decisions should often come directly from the brand identity. To give …

London Fashion Week ss17 is over, and it has for sure been a rich experience! As we always do, we collected the looks that stood most out to us on Pinterest (check it out here) in order to sort out what inspired us. Later, when all the fashion weeks are over, we will run over it again and use it for our trend forecasting. For now, it’s just fashionable indulgence. We have previously argued that it’s important to form ones own ideas, as it’s otherwise easy to be influenced by other peoples’ opinions. The reason is that fashion is socially contextualised, and therefore we all experience fashion differently. There are no right or wrong – though there are general opinions prevailing – and at the end of the day it’s all just very subjective. This can be good to remember, when we hear various opinions pointing in east and west and don’t know what to think. Vogue praised the best 10 shows of London Fashion Week ss17 and – among others – mentioned Christopher Kane, one …

Most of the young designers that I have met in my life, including myself when I was younger, ultimately dream about one day having their own brand. And while we do so – or enrol on the arduous journey of making the dream come through – there are various milestones that we dream about; landing the first order, landing the first order in a top store, dressing a cool celebrity and perhaps being featured in Vogue or another trend-setting magazine. Of course, these are big achievements among millions of bigger and smaller tasks of various difficulties and completely worth celebrating. But once the celebration has taken off; what does it actually mean to the business and brand? Well, being featured in Vogue like Ksenia Schnaider on our cover is a big deal, because it’s a sign of approval from a one of the most trend-setting magazines around. It’s these signs of approval – that can come in many shapes such as PR, celebrity endorsement, retail outlets, customer popularity etc. – that ultimately gives a brand its status. …

It’s September! Fantastic, inspiring, surprising September – at least if you are into fashion. While a considerate amount of people follow the catwalk shows on pages like Vogue.com, and perhaps even share them on social media, while considering ‘could I wear that?’ (or afford that?), there’s another and more systematic and analytical task to do, if you actually study or work in fashion. That is analysing what you see, and extracting the information of inspiration and key fashion show trends ss17 that are important. Because every new season is a follow-up of the past season, which is again building on all the ones that came before. Understanding where fashion is coming from is one of the best ways to understanding, where it’s going. If you work in fashion, this is crucial for you to have a feeling about. So how to go about this analysis? I would recommend creating a folder on your desktop or alternatively a Board on Pinterest, where you can store all the looks, you find exciting. Perhaps Pinterest is a more …

Welcome back! After a long summer, we’re delighted to welcoming you back to The Fashion Crowd. Anastasiya, Gloria and myself have all spent a relaxing summer, while also working hard on tailoring a slightly different website with a slightly different experience. You will see, how we have arranged much of the most important information on a page called Useful Information, so it will always be handy to get at, while also structuring our Community in a more comprehensive way. We’re here to engage on Instagram, our preferred way of sharing visual content with our global network, through a series of hashtags allowing us to Connect-Share-Engage. Have a look at it here. Furthermore, we have put a Q&A page in place, as our project was always based on a vision of being a ‘place-to-go’ for young fashion designers. It’s a completely new initiative, and we’re eager to see, if it will be successful and valuable with our readers. But – enough about us. It’s September, the summer is over, and fashion week is here! It’s one …